INLAND MARINE INSURANCE

Personal Property which has singularly significant value, which is difficult to describe and/or which is frequently off-premises should be insured under a Scheduled Property Floater. 

If your Personal Property is occasionally in transit, we recommend that you check the terms of such shipments to determine if such shipments are at your risk or at the risk of a recipient of the shipments.  If they are at your risk, Transit insurance is available to protect your property.  If you use Common Carriers and have assumed that the carrier is insured for your Property, we recommend that you carefully review the Bill of Lading or contact the carrier to confirm the existence and the scope of the carrier's insurance.  Often, this insurance covers only the limited scope of occurrences for which the Interstate Commerce Commission holds the carrier liable and the amount of insurance is expressed as a value per pound of goods shipped;
irrespective of the goods' true value.

If your Accounts Receivable are maintained manually, you should try to safeguard those records by maintaining them in a fire-retardant receptacle and/or maintaining duplicate records off-premises.  If your Accounts Receivable are maintained on a computer, the same concept applies; except that use of more than one set of storage medium will also reduce the likelihood of a faulty back-up.  If these steps cannot be taken, Accounts Receivable insurance can be purchased to cover your inability to collect Accounts Receivable due to the destruction of your records. 

If you have documents which have a significant intrinsic value or the reproduction of which would entail a significant cost, you should try to safeguard those records by maintaining them in a fire-retardant receptacle.  Coverage for them is available under Valuable Papers insurance. 

If you own or lease a computer, we recommend insuring it under an Electronic Data Processing Floater, rather than under unscheduled Personal Property.  This will provide a specific limit for this valuable equipment and will also provide coverage for damage due to changes in atmosphere and due to artificially generated electrical currents.  We recommend that the programs which operate your computer system and the data in your system be backed-up frequently (daily, if possible), that multiple sets of back-up media be used and that the back-ups be kept off-premises.  If this is not feasible, we recommend that Data/Media coverage be added to the Electronic Data Processing Floater mentioned above.  If you own laptop computers, we recommend that Hardware in Transit coverage be added to the Electronic Data Processing Floater mentioned above.  If your business would suffer a loss of income were your computer to be damaged or destroyed, we recommend that Business Income insurance be added to your Computer Floater.

Many policies contain significant limitations for certain types of damage to plate glass.  If you are a tenant and the terms of your lease make you responsible for damage to plate glass, Plate Glass insurance should be added to your insurance program.  If you own a building, it may be possible to have the limitation eliminated by adding a provision covering building glass as a part of your Real Property Insurance.

Many Property insurance policies contain an exclusion for damage to signs which are attached to the building or which are free-standing.  Sign insurance is available for this exposure.